More than 31,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Gaza, with tens of thousands wounded, since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 240 hostages. International negotiators working to broker a six-week Gaza ceasefire have thus far failed. As Israel blocks most aid from entering Gaza, parents are struggling to feed their children. As of March 12, Gaza’s health ministry reported that at least 25 Palestinians have starved to death, with most of those dying children. International aid organizations and UN officials have been warning for months that Israel’s siege and blockade of the territory was plunging Gaza’s 2.3 million residents into widespread famine.
In advance of his March 7 State of the Union speech, President Biden ordered U.S. military cargo planes to airdrop thousands of meals into Gaza. Humanitarian aid groups condemned Israel for blocking most aid trucks from entering Gaza by land and said the U.S. airdrop was grossly insufficient. Biden’s more recent order to the Pentagon to build a temporary floating dock on Gaza’s coast to speed up humanitarian shipments could take as long as 60 days as Palestinians continue to starve.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Abby Maxman, Oxfam America’s president & CEO and Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle of Boston Children’s Hospital, an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and a member of Doctors Against Genocide. Here they discuss the worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and growing pressure on President Biden to urgently act to stop the bloodshed and prevent famine in Gaza.
ABBY MAXMAN: The situation in Gaza is really — I’m running out of adjectives to be able to describe it. I have 29 staff who are currently there. They are also displaced and working heroically every day, not only to provide immediate needs for their family, loved ones and strangers, but providing aid. And I think, you know, almost 2 million people have been displaced under the gravest hostilities imagined and many of them forcibly displaced multiple times, my staff included — an Oxfam staff.
Now Gaza’s health care capacity is in ruins. There’s no access to clean water. Concerns and reports repeatedly of dehydration and waterborne diseases. And the risk of famine is imminent. We have been sounding the alarms for months now, and we know that people are dying of starvation, starvation is being used as a weapon of war.
And Palestinians in Gaza aren’t starving. They are being starved. What we really need is a ceasefire, the safe return of all hostages and immediate and urgent access to humanitarian aid. And anything less than that is really a Band-Aid over a gaping, gaping wound. And people need virtually everything. Everything. And not enough is getting in. And we have the ability to get so much in quickly if the bombing stops.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you for that, Abby, appreciate that. And I wanted to ask you, Dr. Kuemmerle, to talk about as a physician what we’re seeing unfold with malnutrition and starvation in Gaza. It’s horrifying to see some of these — especially the children who are gaunt and look like pictures out of World War II concentration camps. I can’t believe this is happening. And I think many Americans feel the same way.
DR. KARAMEH KUMMERLE: Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for bringing this subject to life. The population is starving, 25 people have died from starvation, mostly children and older people. The rise in malnutrition amongst children, pregnant women and breast-feeding women is so sharp it is unprecedented — that that happens because of both malnutrition and dehydration. We are seeing a mass killing of children in slow motion because there is no food left and nothing is getting to the children. It’s a warning from Save the Children.
Pregnant women who are malnourished give birth to children with intrauterine growth retardation. And so the babies are much smaller than they should be. The babies are born with multi-organ disease because malnutrition can affect wound healing. It can affect the cardiac system. It can affect the liver and it can also cause long-term mental illness.
There is a much higher incidence of schizophrenia in children who are born to malnourished mothers who suffer from intrauterine growth retardation. There is a correlation between a malnutrition before birth and shortly after birth and long-term incidence of diseases like metabolic syndrome, which is insulin-dependent diabetes. Sometimes obesity, sometimes again liver dysfunction. So we are seeing a full range of diseases that are in the making because of the common starvation situation.
The food scarcity has affected everybody, especially in the north, where people are having to eat animal food and they run out of it. The situation is unprecedented. I think it’s very difficult for us to imagine it. But we know that it’s happening.
SCOTT HARRIS: Yes. Thank you, Dr. Kuemmerle. Abby, I did want to ask you from the perspective of someone who heads up Oxfam America, we’ve recently heard Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talk about how his plan is on track for a military offensive targeting the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinians were directed to flee by Israel to seek safety from the conflict.
But yet we’re in a time period right now where Israel may attack this place, where throngs of refugees are seeking refuge.
ABBY MAXMAN: A further offensive in Rafah is horrifying to consider. It will surely accelerate this deepening humanitarian crisis, hunger crisis, everything that we’ve been describing. The trauma people are experiencing. They have been relocated and relocated and they have nowhere to go. Without a ceasefire, we will see significantly increased loss of civilian life. There have been more aid workers killed in this period over the past five months than most other collective crises that we’ve seen in years.
And we need this ceasefire. It is simply impossible for any and all parts of the international humanitarian system to work safely to distribute aid and help protect the lives of civilians. This has got to stop.
And we are calling the Biden administration to use all its power and influence to require a significant change and to not have an offensive on Rafah. That would be absolutely devastating.
For more information, visit Oxfam America at oxfamamerica.org and Doctors Against Genocide at doctorsagainstgenocide.org.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Abby Maxman and Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle (18:36). More articles and opinion pieces are found in the Related Links section of this page.
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